One of the worst games I've ever player, with absolutely no redeeming qualities
So you basically are a survivor of flight 815 with the other survivors of lost you remember so well. As soon as the opening cutscene ends and you take control of your character and find the plane crash site, you already can sense the game is going to be a flaming turd. Remember those old computer games that used to come free in cereal boxes back in the 90s, that were so cheap and bad that you wonder why the cereal companies wanted to associate their product with such a horrible game. Well I feel the same way about this game, it feels like it had the production quality of a game that would come free in a box of LOST cereal. Lets start with the actual gameplay. You practically do 3 things, and that is the entire game. The first is solving fuse box puzzles, its one of the first things you do when you find the crash site. The box puzzles are just frustrating and some are even difficult to figure out. They absolutely have nothing to do with the story and are just there to waste time. You probably go through a dozen of these. The 2nd is hiding and running from the smoke monster. There is an entire chapter that took me almost an hour to complete just because the design is horrible. You essentially hide in trees from the smoke monster until it goes away, but within a few seconds of emerging, the smoke monster is back coming for you and you die in one hit. They could have at least made an item that distracts the monster or firing your gun should scare it off. Literally there are only 3 parts with the smoke monster and they are so long and frustrating that they make up a third of the game. And the 3rd and final is traveling from point A to point B, which is very tedious and drags the game on longer than you want.
Now the survivors, you hardly interact with them, and when you do, the dialogue options are pretty limited. Not to mention, none of the big events that happened in LOST are never shown. Michael mentions building a raft early on, but you never see it being built, and all of a sudden Michael, Sawyer, and Jin are gone and you have one of the other survivors mention they took off. Not to mention no mention of any deaths, Michael running away to look for Walt, no mention of the others kidnapping Claire. And survivors and key characters are missing from this game, where's Shannon, Boone, Rousseau, Ana Lucia, Libby, Mr. Eko, Bernard, Rose, Walt, Desmond makes one very brief appearance, Jin and Michael disappear after the first two chapters, Sawyer hardly appears, and when you do interact with the survivors, a lot of the dialogue feels forced and unlike something the actual characters would reply in the show, aside from maybe Hurley. The game does not make good use of the survivors at all, they are really only there for a few key story moments, but otherwise are almost completely worthless and outside of a few lame dialogue choices, don't do much other than stand around. And a lot of them act out of character, Locke is way too cheesy and preachy, where in the show he was more quiet and kept many of his beliefs to himself, Jack was way too skeptical and dull, Kate was less suspicious and seemed too accepting, and Sun seemed like she didn't really care about what was going on around her. They could have implemented so many of these characters better, yet Jack, Locke, and Kate are really the only characters who seem to be somewhat significant to the players story.
Outside of the character interactions and mission objectives, let's talk about interesting concepts the game had but absolutely goes nowhere with. The first of these is the trade system. There are certain characters you can trade with items with. This system is interesting and makes sense, but is absolutely worthless. For one, 4 beers gets you a gun. Really, that makes no sense that a survivor is willing to so easily part with a gun just for something so worthless. On top of that, the only items you'll really need the entire game are a few torches and maybe a gun. The torches you are only going to need for one part of the game, and that part only lasts a few minutes, after that torches are completely worthless. The gun is used to kill random others who shoot at you in the trees. Problem with this is, there are only 2 parts where this happens, and they go down in 2 shots, meaning you only need 4 bullets to take them out, and one of those 2 can easily be avoided by running past him. Meaning the trading system is completely a waste of time since you can find most of your items like torches and even lamps on the ground. Finally, this game tries to be open world, meaning you can go wherever you want, yet the map is so constrictive, there are really only 4 areas you can go to on your own, and they are pretty small and have literally nothing significant to explore. Not to mention certain areas close off and you can't go back to once you discover a new area. So there are more like 2 areas you can enter at a time. One final thing that annoyed me are the cutscenes are unskipable, meaning if you die after a cutscene, you have to rewatch it all over again.
Now for the story, the story seems interesting, but there really isn't much to it. You take pictures during random parts when talking to certain characters, and those pictures help you remember about your past in flashbacks. There are really only a few of these, and they are basically for nothing. After maybe 5 or 6 flashbacks, you have the story, and then find a way off the island. Too bad none of what happened to you on the island or your flashbacks, really matter, because at the end of the game you wake up and find out you were dreaming everything the entire time, and are stranded on another island with your girlfriend. That has to be one of the worst endings I've played, after building up a somewhat interesting storyline, despite its shortness, it is completely obsolete. However, the storyline outside the flashbacks is pretty rushed, and events on the island seem to be moving way to quick. One instant your helping survivors after the crash, and a few minutes later after a flashback and running from the smoke monster, you hear and explosion and find out the hatch has been entered, which literally took months and an entire season of LOST to get to, where you can get to that point within 30 minutes of playing. The game can easily be beaten in 5 hours, and 1 of those hours will be spent at an annoying segment with the smoke monster. A big part of the story seems to be Jack being suspicious of you and not trusting you, and all the survivors seem to make a big deal of it when you talk to them, yet Jack never confronts you or seems to care much, until the end, and he seems like he doesn't care much.
Now time for graphics. Graphics are pretty good, if this were a PS2 game, however, this is the PS3, the character models are somewhat off aside from a few. Charlie and Desmond look awful. Not to mention the textures and lighting is just overly bright and bland. Animations are god awful and very stiff, I've seen PS1 games with better animation.
Even with the mediocre graphics and animations, we get bad voice acting. Charlie, Locke, and Michael sound nothing like they do in the show and are just god awful to listen to. Locke sounds like a hick. Sawyer sounds pretty cheesy as well. And the voice actors who decided to voice their characters like Ben, Sun, Desmond, etc., they don't put forth as much energy as they did in the show and feel like they don't care, which I can't really blame them.
Despite all this, the game has absolutely no redeeming qualities, and can be beaten in 5 hours and has no unlockables outside artwork, which isn't anything that great. The story is very linear and uninteresting once you know how it ends, and the game is very frustrating and repetitive, as well as not worth the pain it takes to get through those 5 hours. Unless you like seeing your favorite LOST characters animated poorly with poor cringe worthy voice acting, frustrating and annoying objectives and segments, and a storyline that works up to a very dumb ending, this game is not worth touching. Even if you are a huge LOST fan, just watch the walkthrough on youtube, I've seen guys beat this game in an a little over an hour. This game is just a disgrace to the series and feels like a cheap game you'd find free in a box of cereal. I even think giving it 3.0 was generous but it gets 1 for at least being playable and having no game breaking glitches, 1 for having a somewhat interesting story until the ending, and 1 for being so bad and having such bad voice acting and having characters act so out of place that it gave me a few laughs.
Pros
+Its so bad it will make you laugh a few times
+A few cool concepts, like photography
Cons
-Horrible graphics, animations, and character models
-Voice acting is cringe worthy, not to mention lots of forced dialogue
-Storyline is uninteresting and ending is horrendous
-Game is way too short
-Game overall feels rushed and like a cereal box game
-Game has way too many frustrating moments that make it longer
-The entire game is pretty much repeating the same 3 things over and over
-Some LOST characters don't even appear or have very limited appearances
-The LOST characters don't really add much to the game and feel unhelpful
-Once you beat the game, there's nothing else
-Some LOST characters act out of place and unlike they would in the show
-Map is way too restricting, and hardly any areas to explore
-Game fails at being open ended, and is very linear
-Hardly any enemies, most of the game is spent doing mindless tasks